Seeds of the recent Supreme Court decision granting
corporations "free speech" rights
In 1995, Mother Jones
magazine reported that "no other U.S. company is so reliant on
politicians and governments to butter its bread," citing three core
areas where ADM is supported by U.S. government programs:

Corn subsidies - These make a relatively small contribution to
ADM's bottom line, but with its heavy focus on processing, ADM benefits
from the stability they provide in a volatile market.

The sugar program - By limiting U.S. sugar production (and
sustaining import quotas or high tariffs), the government keeps
sweetener prices high, and so keeps customers such as Coca-Cola
favoring ADM's corn sweeteners over previously standard cane sugar;

Ethanol subsidies - This is by far the most significant earner,
since ADM reaps about half of the annual $3.5 billion tax credit that
goes to producers of ethanol used as car fuel.

(Reports on the political and media influence of ADM include: Tim
Weiner, 1 "Dwayne's World: Influence of Archer-Daniels is Wide
as Well as Deep", New York Times
1/16/96; Scott Kilman, Bruce Ingersoll, and Jill Abramson, "Risk
Averse: How Dwayne Andreas Rules Archer-Daniels by Hedging His Bets,
CEO Works With Rivals, Gives to Both Parties and Invests in the Media,"
Wall Street Journal, 10/27/95.)

According to Mother Jones, ADM's lobbyists and the campaign
contributions helped guarantee the maintenance of these policies for
decades.

Tom Philpott reported in December of 2006 "CEO Andreas
gained legendary status as a double-dealer during the Watergate
investigations, when the congressional hearings revealed that he had
cut the $25,000 check used by Richard Nixon's "plumbers" to finance the
famous hotel break-in. From the same hearings it emerged that in 1968,
Andreas had illegally donated $100,000 to Minnesota Sen. Hubert
Humphrey - Nixon's Democratic opponent in the 1968 election, and a
longtime Andreas favorite."

Andreas had connections to other top politicians as well, including Bob Dole (see Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Viveca
Novak," The Corporate Dole," Time
9/23/96), Soviet leaders Brezhnev and Gorbachev, as well as to top
law firms and lawyers, including Robert Strauss (Akin Gump Strauss
Hauer & Feld) and Edward Bennett Williams.

During the 1992 election campaign then-ADM CEO Dwayne Andreas, along
with his associates, contributed $1.4 million to party organizations
and $345,000 to individual candidates; in 1994 they gave $657,000 to
parties and $224,000 to individuals. In 1994, the same year
President Clinton pushed through legislation requiring 30% of gasoline
sold in America's most polluted cities to contain ethanol products, he
was given a $100,000 donation.

ADM's political influence was again the focus of an article in Mother Jones in 1998. AARC
(Alternative Agricultural Research and Commercialization) Corp - a
venture capital firm wholly owned by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, was working to boost the development of "environmentally
friendly" non-food products from farm and forest materials. AARC
Corp.'s chairman was Martin Andreas, Dwayne Andreas's nephew, who
reportedly steered $2.4 million in AARC's research money to ADM
projects or business interest.

Andreas and ADM earned hefty returns for their political
investments. The grain titan is widely credited with convincing
President Nixon to initiate and provide financing for a historic $700
million sale of U.S. grain to the Soviet Union in 1972 - a deal for
which Archer Daniels Midland played the profitable role of middleman.
The sale had a dramatic and lasting effect on U.S. agriculture. The
resulting spike in demand, exacerbated by a drought the following year,
sent grain prices surging. High grain prices rippled through the U.S.
food system, helping (along with the 1973 OPEC oil embargo) to spark
the "stagflation" that gripped the U.S. economy into the next decade.

Under Andreas, a huge investment was also made in underwriting TV
broadcasts on four major networks: ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. It was this
massive amount of spending that made the company's slogan, Supermarket
to the World", so recognizable. (In the wake of the price-fixing
scandal, when critics derided the company for its "super markup to the
world," ADM changed the slogan to "The Nature of What's to Come" -
ironically, in the midst of growing concerns about genetically modified
food and feed.)

According to the Center
for
Responsive Politics (which maintains corporate political
spending data), ADM's political spending dropped significantly
after the 2002 election cycle. Nevertheless, the company is ranked 90th
among the all-time highest list ("heavy hitters") of top donors between
1989-2010 (as of 1/11/10), giving a total of $8.3 million, with just
over half (56%) going to Republicans (versus 43% to Democrats). The
company's influence in the White House and on the Hill didn't seem to
wane much after 2002, despite the drop in campaign donations.

Soon after taking office in 2001 (ADM dropped $100,000 on the
Bush/Cheney inauguration), President George W. Bush displayed his
fealty by tapping Chuck Conner -- then-president of an ADM front group
called the Corn Refiners Association -- as his "special assistant to
the president for agriculture, trade, and food assistance." In 2005,
Conner became deputy secretary of agriculture.

Sasha Lilley, reported
in June 2006 for CorpWatch that "Politicians from the Midwestern Corn
Belt are some of the company's staunchest allies. Senators Richard
Durbin, Charles Grassley, and Tom Harkin, and Representative Dick
Gephardt have consistently supported lavish federal tax subsidies to
ethanol producers, with ADM as the prime beneficiary. All are
recipients of political action committee donations from the
agribusiness behemoth. The Wall
Street Journal has referred to the former South Dakota senator
and Senate minority leader as "Archer Daschle Midland," because of his
unswerving support for the interests of the company."

Astonishingly, ADM never registered an in-house lobbyist until 2006,
when the secretary of the Senate assured watchdogs at Public Citizen that ADM
"expects that it will have a person on staff who will meet the
statutory test [to register as a lobbyist], and thus, will register in
the future." (Anna Palmer, "ADM's Invisible Touch,"Legal Times, April 2006)

ADM reported to the Senate Office of Public Records (database searched
on 1/8/10) that it spent $2 million on lobbying by staff lobbyists
between 7/1/08 and 6/30/09, including $1,020,000 in Q3 2008 alone.
(ADM's in-house lobby team includes Shannon Herzfeld, vice president of
Government Relations, David Woodruff, Beth Holzman and Anthony Reed.)
In addition, the company reported paying Akin, Gump and Rick Carne
Consulting, LLC to lobby on its behalf. (Back in 1996, it was Akin Gump
that had brokered a side-deal to the $100 million price-fixing
settlement with the office of then Secretary of Agriculture Dan
Glickman to prevent the corporation from being barred from
over $80 million in annual federal funding. Twenty years before, the
company had been barred for manipulating grain shipments for the Food
for Peace market. After leaving government service, Glickman and his
former chief of staff both joined Akin Gump. See Lieber, Rats in the Grain, pages 317, 342).